Canada and the International Movement to Ban Landmines

Ottawa Process Points Towards a New Multilateralism

by Bob Lawson

The following was written by Bob Lawson who is Head of the
Conventional Arms Section of the Non-proliferation, Arms Control
and Disarmament Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and
International Trade. Bob is not a Quaker but he has put a lot of
energy into the campaign to ban landmines as a government official
and we think his article describes particularly well events leading
to the ban with particular emphasis on the exceptional cooperation
between government and NGOs. The article was published in the
November, 1997 issue of the Peace and Environment News and is
reprinted here with the permission of the Peace and Environment
Resource Centre.

Through the Ottawa Process culiminating in the landmines ban
treaty conference this December, Canada is leading an unprecedented
coalition of governments and international and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) in an exploration of new forms of multilateral
diplomacy in the post-Cold War era. In pursuing their common
objective - a total ban on anti-personnel mines, the source of a
global humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions - this diverse
coalition is reshaping the rules of multilateral diplomacy. The
Ottawa Process is setting new standards for foreign policy activism
in the pursuit of international disarmament and human security.

Destruction in slow motion

While anti-personnel mines (APMs) have been used extensively
by military forces for decades, it wasn't until the early 1990s
that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) war
surgeons and NGO aid workers began alerting the world to the fact
that this relatively obscure tactical weapon had mutated into a
weapon of mass destruction - a weapon moving in slow motion, taking
one victim at a time in almost every region of the world.

By the time the first comprehensive report on APMs was
published in the early 1990s, it was clear that as many as 25,000
people were being killed or injured by APMs every year, the vast
majority being innocent women and children. Experts estimated that
there were at least 110 million landmines in 70 countries, most of
them in the developing world.

APMs are inexpensive, costing (US)$3 each to produce, and
easily deployed in large numbers. But their true cost is much
greater. APMs render massive tracts of land useless for farming,
settlement, or economic development, adding starvation, refugee
flows, and poverty to the list of difficulties affecting countries
struggling to recover from war. Mine clearance is a slow,
dangerous and expensive business. It costs as much as (US) $800 to
clear a single mine. The alternative is even more costly -
clearing mines one arm or leg at a time.

NGOs call for a ban

NGOs were the first to call for a total ban on APMs. In the
fall of 1991 the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Medico
International launched an advocacy campaign to coordinate NGOs
pressing for a ban. By the fall of 1992 these organizations were
joined by Handicap International, Human Rights Watch, the Mine
Advisory Group, and Physicians for Human Rights to form the
International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

The international community had already reconized the
potential for disaster caused by widespread use of APMs. A United
Nations Diplomatic Conference, convened in 1977 to negotiate an
additional Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention, had clearly
recognized that the use of APMs should be restricted under
International Humanitarian Law. While this 1977 Convention on
Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Landmines Protocol placed
significant restrictions on the use of APMs, by the early 1990s it
was clear that these restrictions were not reducing the damage APMs
were doing to civilians.

The political terrain had shifted by the time the 54 states
that signed the 1977 Protocol met in Vienna in the fall of 1995 to
review its provisions. The Red Cross had launched a world-wide
media campaign advocating a total ban on APMs. The ICBL, by then
representing over 350 NGOs from 23 countries, used the Vienna
meeting to launch sophisticated pro-ban public advocacy activities.
Then-United Nations Secretary-General Boutrous Boutrous-Ghali
publicly supported a comprehensive ban in his address to the review
conference. However, despite the growing pressure for a total ban,
what emerged from the CCW Review Conference were merely incremental
improvements to the Protocol, which continued to legitimize the use
of APMs.

By this time Canada had concluded that limited restrictions on
the use of APMs would not be effective. On January 17, 1996,
Canada announced its support for a total ban. It also declared a
unilateral comprehensive moratorium on the production, transfer and
use of APMs. Simultaneously, Canadian officials began to meet with
NGO representatives and other pro-ban states to explore a new track
of diplomatic action. At the conclusion of the final session of
the CCW Review Conference in Geneva, Canadian officals joined
representatives of the ICRC and the United Nations in announcing
Canada's intention to host an international meeting in the fall of
1996 to develop a strategy for a comprehensive ban on APMs.

The Ottawa Process

The Ottawa Conference of October, 1966 entitled "Towards a
Global Ban on Anti-Personnel Mines," was attended by 74 states and
a wide range of NGOs. At the conference, ministers and officials
shared plenary and workshop platforms with mine victims,
parliamentarians, and NGO representatives. All participants in the
conference were invited to contribute to an Agenda for Action to
build political will for an APM ban. The real news of the
conference was made during Minister Lloyd Axworthy's dramatic final
speech when he invited states to work with Canada in negotiating a
treaty banning APMs to be signed by December 1997.

What emerged from the Ottawa Conference provided the framework
for what would become known as the Ottawa Process - an intense
program of diplomatic and political activites aimed at negotiating
and signing an APM ban treaty in little over 14 months. The
driving force behind this process was a coalition of like-minded
states and NGOs such as the ICRC and the ICBL. The initial core
states included Austria, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Mexico,
Netherlands, Norway, Phillipines, South Africa and Switzerland.

Noticeably absent from the initial supporters of the Ottawa
Process were all five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Russia and China rejected the very notion of an APM ban. Although
the United States, the UK and France were, in principle, supportive
of a ban, they were openly critical of the Ottawa Process, arguing
that this "coalition of the angels" would have little practical
effect on the global APM crisis. Informed observers noted that
these states shared a distaste for the Ottawa Process and its
strategic alliance with the NGO community. These five states said
they favoured negotiating an APM ban treaty within the Conference
on Disarmament in Geneva. Decisions in this forum are based on
consensus, giving each state an effective veto. A proposal for a
ban would move forward only as fast as the slowest anti-ban state.

Canadian officials remained convinced that the secret to
success would be to maintain Minister Axworthy's deadline for
action, combined with a series of multilateral meetings during
which NGO and media pressure could be brought to bear directly on

The Brussels Conference

On the eve of the Brussels conference in June 1997, the
momentum behind the Ottawa Process was clearly growing. Over 70
governments had pledged their support for a ban treaty. Meanwhile
the NGO communities in the UK and France had made an APM ban an
election issue, with both the newly elected UK and French
governments becoming supporters of the Ottawa Process. US
officials promised that they would review their policies in July.

The centrepiece of the Brussels Conference was a political
declaration that locked in commitments to the final stages of
Ottawa Process (the negotiations in Oslo and the signing of the
treaty in Ottawa in December). By the end of the Conference, 97
states had signed the Brussels Declaration. Including supporters
who could not attend the conference, a total of 107 states joined
the Ottawa Process.

In December, Foreign Ministers will meet in Ottawa to sign an
APM ban treaty. In the 9 months between the Ottawa and Brussels
conferences, over 100 states have become convinced of the need to
ban forever an entire category of modern weaponry - an
unprecedented achievement within the field of multilateral arms
control and disarmament. This is even more impressive when one
remembers that the Ottawa Process was the creation of a middle-
power/civil society coalition working in the face of opposition
from Permanent Security Council members.

Towards a new multilateralism

The success of the Ottawa Process highlights the potential for
a new form of multilateralism which capitalizes upon the emergence
of new sources of diplomatic influence in the post-Cold War era.
International public opinion, transnational NGOs and revolutions in
telecommunications and the mass media have eroded the traditional
boundaries and prerogatives of diplomatic praxis. The coalition
forged by Canada around the APM issue was successful in harnessing
a number of these new sources of influence. The process provides
a dramatically expanded diplomatic tool kit for officials
developing strategies to influence key decision makers at state,
regional and global levels. The Ottawa Process effectively
combined public diplomacy efforts by key foreign ministers and
senior officials with NGO-led civil society advocacy campaigns.

Multilateral diplomacy remains a contested terrain where
middle powers such as Canada often have a home-field advantage.
Canada's extensive experience with multilateralism provided a solid
foundation upon which the framework of a dramatic and innovative
diplomatic initiative could quickly be constructed. But while the
Ottawa Process may have emerged as an ad hoc response to the need
for immediate multilateral action, it will produce more than a much
needed international treaty banning APMs. At a time when a growing
number of global challenges require timely, and truly global
responses, the success of the Ottawa Process holds out the hope
that multilateral diplomacy will continue to evolve as a flexible
and effective instrument of global governance.

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